Microbiologist traces possible origin of AIDS epidemic to WWI soldier

[+ sync]

You use the present tense to describe your belief. No changes with more developing information?

And did/do you also believe that the evil government scientists, who were smart enough to invent the virus and had the means to introduce it into the gay male community (without anyone else in the scientific community knowing about it), were not smart enough to realize that it could be easily transmitted by gay men to their unsuspecting wives, unborn children, hemophiliacs and patients receiving blood transfusions? By the way, what were those medications used only by gay men that they were "tainting" with the virus?

I made no mention of "evil government scientists," only "government." Are we not right now experiencing the evidence of how the voices of government scientists were gagged/muted/altered with full knowledge of the impending onset and communicability of a deadly virus infecting not just a segment of the population but the entire population?

[+ Charlie]

I made no mention of "evil government scientists," only "government." Are we not right now experiencing the evidence of how the voices of government scientists were gagged/muted/altered with full knowledge of the impending onset and communicability of a deadly virus infecting not just a segment of the population but the entire population?

You are comparing two very different things: an attempt by bureaucrats to stifle information that was widely known within the scientific community from reaching the general public, to a secret plot by the "government" to kill a specific group of citizens, with a weapon which was somehow engineered by a scientist or scientists within the government. There has never been any scientific evidence that HIV could have been invented in a lab, or that it could somehow be used to "taint" a medication that would somehow transmit it to gay men.

[+ sync]

You are comparing two very different things: an attempt by bureaucrats to stifle information that was widely known within the scientific community from reaching the general public, to a secret plot by the "government" to kill a specific group of citizens, with a weapon which was somehow engineered by a scientist or scientists within the government. There has never been any scientific evidence that HIV could have been invented in a lab, or that it could somehow be used to "taint" a medication that would somehow transmit it to gay men.

You are limiting the possibility of government malevolence to just one biochemical incident.

 

We will never agree about the possibility/impossibility of the creation and intentional spread of AIDS in the U.S., but I leave you with the advisement that you are way, way too trusting.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/19/archives/senators-are-told-of-test-of-a-gas-attack-in-subway-engineer-says.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1861031,00.html

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)17875-1/fulltext

https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/13/how_the_u_s_government_exposed

[+ pitman]

I was a subject in that study.

I was also in that study. Sometime in the '80s I was asked for permission to test my blood that was drawn in 1979. I consented and it confirmed that I was negative in 1979. I'm 99% certain that I seroconverted in 1982 but that was not confirmed until several years later. I had only minor symptoms for the first few years and none since going on HAART.

[Rudynate]

I was also in that study. Sometime in the '80s I was asked for permission to test my blood that was drawn in 1979. I consented and it confirmed that I was negative in 1979. I'm 99% certain that I seroconverted in 1982 but that was not confirmed until several years later. I had only minor symptoms for the first few years and none since going on HAART.

 

 

I dont ever recall them requesting permission to re-test my blood.

[Rudynate]

My belief parallels those asserted in the video. AIDS appeared just at the time that homosexual rights became a political hot potato; infections first appeared only in homosexual populations (San Francisco, Atlanta, New York).

 

 

It appeared first among gay men because they had a lot of sex - it is hard to imagine now how much sex gay men had in the seventies. In a place like San Francisco or New York it wasn't at all difficult to have sex with several men in a day. If you went to the baths, not at all difficult to play with 4, 5 or 6 men. Straight people were shocked by it.

 

I remember a couple who co-owned a stock transfer agency. They were sort of an "it" couple - they gave great parties and everyone wanted to know them. They would go to the baths and stay high on coke for several days at a time. They would have take-out delivered to the baths and their office staff would call them at the baths and have them paged if there was something they needed to take care of at the office.

 

In large cities they had huge warehouse parties that were the forerunners to today's raves - all about dancing till you drop, sex and drugs.

 

That's what the 70s were like.

[marylander1940]

My belief parallels those asserted in the video. AIDS appeared just at the time that homosexual rights became a political hot potato; infections first appeared only in homosexual populations (San Francisco, Atlanta, New York).

 

My suspicion was/is that medication(s) were tainted with the AIDS virus and shipped into the free clinics where unsuspecting and trusted healthcare professionals became the delivery system.

 

 

I believed it likely to be a government bio weapon because of the speed and finality of what it did. The government quickly responded to the bio weapon suspicions and accusations with finger pointing to other possibilities.

 

At one time the government cast suspicion upon the Haitian boat-people. When the Haitian community made it clear they were not having it, government finger pointing shifted to a male Canadian flight attendant who, while in Africa, allegedly engaged sexually with an African man who had been bitten by a monkey (of course, the flight attendant was unavailable for comment at the time due to his demise). This claim for AIDS transmission was later dispelled.

 

And did/do you also believe that the evil government scientists, who were smart enough to invent the virus and had the means to introduce it into the gay male community (without anyone else in the scientific community knowing about it), were not smart enough to realize that it could be easily transmitted by gay men to their unsuspecting wives, unborn children, hemophiliacs and patients receiving blood transfusions? By the way, what were those medications used only by gay men that they were "tainting" with the virus?

 

The 2 of you make good points @sync sometimes coincidences happen. I don't think HIV was created on purpose to hurt gay people.

 

 

It appeared first among gay men because they had a lot of sex - it is hard to imagine now how much sex gay men had in the seventies. In a place like San Francisco or New York it wasn't at all difficult to have sex with several men in a day. If you went to the baths, not at all difficult to play with 4, 5 or 6 men. Straight people were shocked by it.

 

I remember a couple who co-owned a stock transfer agency. They were sort of an "it" couple - they gave great parties and everyone wanted to know them. They would go to the baths and stay high on coke for several days at a time. They would have take-out delivered to the baths and their office staff would call them at the baths and have them paged if there was something they needed to take care of at the office.

 

In large cities they had huge warehouse parties that were the forerunners to today's raves - all about dancing till you drop, sex and drugs.

 

That's what the 70s were like.

 

and somehow you and I survived.

[orville]

Natural or created, the virus is real. ARVs work.

What is really suspicious to me is that Covid (a more virulent virus) got a vaccine in less than a year yet HIV hasn't.

Yes, I suppose there are scientific explanations as to the why but let's be realistic.

ARVs are way more profitable in the long run, than a vaccine or a cure.

[+ Charlie]

You are limiting the possibility of government malevolence to just one biochemical incident.

 

We will never agree about the possibility/impossibility of the creation and intentional spread of AIDS in the U.S., but I leave you with the advisement that you are way, way too trusting.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/19/archives/senators-are-told-of-test-of-a-gas-attack-in-subway-engineer-says.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860871_1860876_1861031,00.html

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)17875-1/fulltext

https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/13/how_the_u_s_government_exposed

And you are way too quick to leap to conspiracy theories without reading your sources carefully. "Government malevolence" is a combination of two vague concepts. The links you have provided are not about malevolence, but about secret actions the federal government took to test out scientific theories. Most of the actions were not expected to harm anyone, and in most cases they didn't. When they did cause harm, it was unintentional, and was not directed against any specific group of people. The purpose of the interview with Leonard Cole was not to talk about a government action but a crime committed by a person unknown, the sending of the anthrax-laden letters through the mail to specific individuals. The major exception in which people were deliberately harmed, mentioned briefly in one of your links, occurred almost a century ago, in which black men were used without their knowledge as subjects in a test of the effects of untreated syphilis, at a time when there was no cure for the disease. It was totally unethical but was not recognized as such by many American scientists at the time; government scientists would not be able to get approval for the same kind of experiment today. What you are suggesting about AIDS, however, was not an experiment but a purposeful act by "government" (which you don't define), acting our of hatred and ill will, to harm gay men.

[Luv2play]

There's the fact that promiscuous people exist, which there always have been, and the fraction of the population that is promiscuous, which didn't really take off until the 70s. That's an exponential jump in exposure opportunity.

There's also the fact that most people who got it died of it in somewhat short order. The long haulers were relatively rare. And people didn't always know WHAT people died of back then.

A famous example of a promiscuous couple at the apex of society in the first half of the twentieth century (he was Britain’s last Viceroy to India in 1947 when it became independent) was Lord Mountbatten and his wife, the beautiful Edwina, an heiress who had more money than him. He was the uncle of Prince Charles. At one point he confessed “we spent most of our lives jumping into and out of bed with other people’s spouses” or words to that effect.

[+ sync]

And you are way too quick to leap to conspiracy theories without reading your sources carefully. "Government malevolence" is a combination of two vague concepts. The links you have provided are not about malevolence, but about secret actions the federal government took to test out scientific theories. Most of the actions were not expected to harm anyone, and in most cases they didn't. When they did cause harm, it was unintentional, and was not directed against any specific group of people. The purpose of the interview with Leonard Cole was not to talk about a government action but a crime committed by a person unknown, the sending of the anthrax-laden letters through the mail to specific individuals. The major exception in which people were deliberately harmed, mentioned briefly in one of your links, occurred almost a century ago, in which black men were used without their knowledge as subjects in a test of the effects of untreated syphilis, at a time when there was no cure for the disease. It was totally unethical but was not recognized as such by many American scientists at the time; government scientists would not be able to get approval for the same kind of experiment today. What you are suggesting about AIDS, however, was not an experiment but a purposeful act by "government" (which you don't define), acting our of hatred and ill will, to harm gay men.

Oh, they were only government tests never intending to cause harm. Thank you, I feel so much better now.

[samhexum]

At one point he confessed “we spent most of our lives jumping into and out of bed with other people’s spouses” or words to that effect.

 

Yes, but with all of that jumping, did they ever actually get around to having sex? ??????

[Luv2play]

It appeared first among gay men because they had a lot of sex - it is hard to imagine now how much sex gay men had in the seventies. In a place like San Francisco or New York it wasn't at all difficult to have sex with several men in a day. If you went to the baths, not at all difficult to play with 4, 5 or 6 men. Straight people were shocked by it.

 

I remember a couple who co-owned a stock transfer agency. They were sort of an "it" couple - they gave great parties and everyone wanted to know them. They would go to the baths and stay high on coke for several days at a time. They would have take-out delivered to the baths and their office staff would call them at the baths and have them paged if there was something they needed to take care of at the office.

 

In large cities they had huge warehouse parties that were the forerunners to today's raves - all about dancing till you drop, sex and drugs.

 

That's what the 70s were like.

Some straight men had sex with thousands of people too in that period. George’s Simenon, the Belgian author of the Maigret detective series, wrote about having sex with over a thousand women during his career as a popular writer. It seems they couldn’t resist him.

[Luv2play]

Yes, but with all of that jumping, did they ever actually get around to having sex? ??????

Apparently. They were both incredibly good looking people, like you would see in the movies at the time. Hard to believe he was Prince Charle’s uncle, who lost out in the looks department.

[+ sniper]

A famous example of a promiscuous couple at the apex of society in the first half of the twentieth century (he was Britain’s last Viceroy to India in 1947 when it became independent) was Lord Mountbatten and his wife, the beautiful Edwina, an heiress who had more money than him. He was the uncle of Prince Charles. At one point he confessed “we spent most of our lives jumping into and out of bed with other people’s spouses” or words to that effect.

Yes, but many of those people they were hopping into bed with only had two partners - their spouse and the person they cheated with. What changed in the 70s was many more people with hundreds of partners MANY OF WHOM had a similar number of partners, and then going back to each other periodically. That's where the exponential rise in exposure possibility occurs.

When there's a closed chain of partners, even if they're all having sex willy-nilly back and forth, if nobody in that chain is actually infected, it's not a problem. But then there are overlapping chains there's much more opportunity to spread.

The 60s and 70s had a large number of people becoming more active, plus a larger portion of them having the means to travel and get those chains overlapping. From a perspective of disease transmission potential, it was just vastly different than prior eras. And it was straight people too. Swingers clubs in the Poconos, Plato's Retreat in NYC...

[marylander1940]

Some straight men had sex with thousands of people too in that period. George’s Simenon, the Belgian author of the Maigret detective series, wrote about having sex with over a thousand women during his career as a popular writer. It seems they couldn’t resist him.

 

Straight people as pointed by @Monarchy79 in another thread are catching up with us in promiscuity!

[Monarchy79]

And did/do you also believe that the evil government scientists, who were smart enough to invent the virus and had the means to introduce it into the gay male community (without anyone else in the scientific community knowing about it), were not smart enough to realize that it could be easily transmitted by gay men to their unsuspecting wives, unborn children, hemophiliacs and patients receiving blood transfusions? By the way, what were those medications used only by gay men that they were "tainting" with the virus?

 

Well Charlie, it’s a possibility that they weren’t smart enough to realize those facts.

 

Or they possibly considered those facts and thought the collateral damage of just a few outliers that could possibly be exposed, wouldn’t cause much of an impact to human kind.

 

The government could have thought that infecting gay men could be contained in this experiment, as similar experiments with diseases have been successful with containment with targeted groups in the past; hence, The Tuskegee Experiment.....

[Monarchy79]

Straight people as pointed by @Monarchy79 in another thread are catching up with us in promiscuity!

 

 

I think I better clarify my previous statement on that topic. I don’t think that the straights need any catching up to do with promiscuity. They just need to catch up with their judgments, and openness about it. The straights mastered promiscuity, and simultaneously mastered the hypocrisy of sexual-related shaming as well.

[Rudynate]

Apparently. They were both incredibly good looking people, like you would see in the movies at the time. Hard to believe he was Prince Charle’s uncle, who lost out in the looks department.

 

 

Uncle was a Mountbatten - Charles inherited the characteristic Windsor look. When I was a kid, the Sunday supplement of the newspaper was always full of photographs of European royalty. My mother always commented that the Windsors all looked "horsey."

[Rudynate]

Some straight men had sex with thousands of people too in that period. George’s Simenon, the Belgian author of the Maigret detective series, wrote about having sex with over a thousand women during his career as a popular writer. It seems they couldn’t resist him.

 

I'm sure that was true. Average straight guys were envious. They would say, "Man, you guys have got it good!"

[Luv2play]

Uncle was a Mountbatten - Charles inherited the characteristic Windsor look. When I was a kid, the Sunday supplement of the newspaper was always full of photographs of European royalty. My mother always commented that the Windsors all looked "horsey."

On the men’s side they were all Germans. Battenberg and Saxe Cobourg. Had to change their names during WWI to sound English in order to keep their jobs. Lol.

[+ sync]

Well Charlie, it’s a possibility that they weren’t smart enough to realize those facts.

 

Or they possibly considered those facts and thought the collateral damage of just a few outliers that could possibly be exposed, wouldn’t cause much of an impact to human kind.

 

The government could have thought that infecting gay men could be contained in this experiment, as similar experiments with diseases have been successful with containment with targeted groups in the past; hence, The Tuskegee Experiment.....

I so envy your verbiage skills. In just three concise statements you clarified my controversial point of view surrounding a particularly frightening and painful period in the lives of the LGBTQ communities, which lingers to this day. My efforts are more likely to either fall short in clarity or in some manner offend.

[+ Lucky]

I am not going to blame the AIDS epidemic on gay promiscuity.

[+ nycman]

I am not going to blame the AIDS epidemic on gay promiscuity.

Well, it sure as fuck didn’t help.

 

We must embrace the truth, even when we don’t like it.

[Rudynate]

On the men’s side they were all Germans. Battenberg and Saxe Cobourg. Had to change their names during WWI to sound English in order to keep their jobs. Lol.

 

 

Right - the Windsors were originally from Haus Hanover. The last Hanoverian Monarch was Queen Victoria. Edward VII, Victoria's oldest son, was the first Saxe-Coburg. They changed their name to Windsor in WWI.

 

The Mountbattens were originally Battenberg.